Oracle saw the blip of Robin’s GPS heading
for her building, so she activated the hologram at the window. If
anyone happened to be watching, they would see the vigilante vanish from
view and assume he had swung behind the building.

“Hey, Babs,” was the predictable greeting,
followed by the equally predictable, “Ooh, cold pizza. Mind if I…?”

“Sure,” Barbara nodded, putting several
monitors on auto-scan. “You have a disk for me?”

“Yep, those are all the backups for the
guidance system Radii-e is developing the week before it was taken.
Agent Brosk thought we could compare it to the version that was recovered
and see if anything was added.”

He handed over a thumb drive that was no
larger than a thumbnail.

“This is new,” Barbara remarked, flipping
over the slip of black plastic, affixed with a tiny, raised, silver bat
silhouette.

“Prototype. B says we’ll get the real
ones next month, same time as the WayneTech release.”

“Ah,” Barbara hid her grin as she slid the
drive into her USB port. “The analysis will take twenty minutes or so.
Will that be enough time?”

“Time for what?” Tim asked innocently.

“Come off it, Wonder Boy. You could
have uploaded these files from the Redbird, they didn’t need to be walked in
on a disk. So what did you want to see me about?”

“Busted, huh? Okay, well, it’s this
paper I’m working on, on the sociology of superheroes.”

“Stop right there. Tim, you know that
none of us are supposed to talk to you for that class. I agree with
Bruce on this one; you shouldn’t be taking it. You know too much as
Robin that you shouldn’t know as Tim Drake. Just look at this disk you
brought me, that’s a master’s thesis right there, but there is just no way—”

“Whoa, no, timeout, flag on the play,
hold.”

“Hold?”

“I’m just trying to get a word in edgewise,
Barbara. I’m not here to ‘interview’ Oracle or ask what it’s like
working with Batman—or his far more interesting and talented sidekicks.”

He smiled his most charming smile, and
Barbara answered with a skeptical raised-eyebrow glare.

“I wanted to ask your help as a librarian,”
Tim said seriously. “See, Randy-quad is taking this media studies
course where they’re watching reality shows.”

“We’ve got those too, but this is good,
listen. UK series takes this modern family and plops them into a
Victorian house, makes them live like it’s 1900, washing their hair with egg
whites and stuff. And they’ve got all this source material: newspapers
and diaries from the period. So when they find some mention of, like,
fish ‘n chips, they can go out and eat that. Find an entry where some
women were starting to complain about wearing corsets, or some doctor is
saying they might be detrimental to breathing, the wife and daughter don’t
have to wear the corsets anymore.”

“Ah, I get it. So you're thinking as
long as you can find a quote or a citation for whatever it is you want to
say in your paper…”

“Then I can reference it, yeah! Tim
Drake doesn’t know anything more about superheroes than any other freshman
with a library card.”

Barbara bit her lip, thinking it over.

“Okay,” she said finally. “I guess I
can squeeze in a search here and there, in a good cause. If you let me
know the subject you’re looking for, I can point you in the right
direction.”

“You rock!” Tim declared.

*** Years Before***

Batman made a wide sweep of the block
before approaching the window of Barbara’s new co-op. From an
identity-guarding standpoint, he preferred her old location at the
Clocktower, but he reluctantly accepted the fact that she would live
wherever she liked, regardless of what he thought was best.

He handed over a CD-ROM:

“All the data on the Russian mob’s
progression from check cashing to Medicare fraud to identity theft in L.A.,
Star City, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Metropolis.”

“Check,” Barbara said, inserting it into
the waiting drive. “I’ll run it against the backscatter from the
operation here. It’ll take a few hours, but it should give us a good
idea what local talent they’ll try to recruit. If we can anticipate
them, you can be waiting. Shut ‘em down in the transition phase.”

Batman grunted.

“Now the real reason you’re here?” Barbara
said. “Not like I couldn’t have pulled all this off the League
mainframe.”

Batman scowled, nodded, and then,
incredibly, he said “There is something I thought I should tell you face to
face.” This while carefully removing his cowl, which made Barbara
purse her lips. Whatever was coming couldn’t possibly be good.
What the hell could it be now? More protocol backlash? Another
fight with Nightwing? Or maybe her father's replacement reached a
decision about the Bat-Signal.

Bruce had tilted his shoulders forward to
create the needed slack in his cape as he sat, and took the seat next to
her.

“I’ve been seeing Selina Kyle,” he said
simply. “Catwoman. And it’s become serious enough that I told
her my identity. Now, by implication, that revealed Dick’s. You
and Tim are not exposed, but you need to be aware of the situation. If
you’re guests at the manor or interacting with Bruce Wayne and you don’t
want to be comp—”

“Not an issue,” Barbara interrupted.
“Catwoman’s known my identity for quite some time.”

Bruce’s head snapped back slightly as if
evading a punch, then his jaw clenched, his eyes darkened, and his entire
body, though still seated, seemed to grow larger and denser. Barbara
could almost imagine the outline of the cowl reemerging on his face.

“Explain,” he graveled.

“It was about a year after I started
functioning as Oracle. You know how the feds like to impress captured
hackers into service once they’ve caught them. Dangle the threat of
prosecution, force them to work on cases. They targeted me.
Operation: Sibyl Snare.”

“Why am I only hearing about this now?”

“Because you tried hacking into my
security, Bruce. Remember? Checking up on me, making sure I
could ‘handle the stress’ of being Oracle. If you’ve forgotten, I
still have the lovely digital photos from when I turned the tables on you.
After all that, after I let you watch and think you were pulling one over on
me and then let you have it… After that, there was no way I could
come to you with a problem I couldn’t handle.”

“Go on,” he ordered.

“In a way, it was very liberating.
Since I couldn’t go to you with ‘a problem I couldn’t handle,’ I did
have to handle it. Myself. Solo. Independent—a lot more
independent than I’d ever been as Batgirl. Looking back, that might
have been the point where I faced some hard truths about that part of my
life.

“Anyway, I had a problem and I had to
tackle it myself. The feds had one of their tamed hackers working on
something to get me. And because they knew their target was a creature
of the grid, they were keeping this thing completely isolated: paper reports,
physical disks, the guy working on it was restricted to one computer
unconnected to any network. It was like the damn thing was designed to
taunt me: everything physical, non-digital, the essence of what I couldn’t
do anymore.

“It was the idea of being independent, I
thought of Catwoman. I figured if anybody would understand, she would.
I had to do this myself, and I couldn’t do it ‘in person.’ Her
computer I could hack into. Well, in a roundabout way. You had a
93% probable on a fence she used in Belgium.”

*** Years Before That***

“Nutmeg, stop,” Selina squealed, jostling
the laptop as she pulled the new kitten’s needle-claws from her neck.
“Look, you little princess, I know you want something warm and mom-size to
nap on, and right now my shoulder is it. And that’s fine as long as
you don’t stab me while I read my emai… What is that?”

The screen had darkened, so the email
Selina was reading appeared as a faint watermark in the darkest gray against
near-black. On top of this, columns of glowing green data began to
fall down the screen like rain: 1s and 0s, Japanese kanji, chemical symbols
and glyphs. Through the slow rain of data, an illuminated head
emerged, a head the uninitiated might call an alien, but which Selina
recognized as Oracle.

:: Catwoman? :: it said—a
female voice, Selina noted. Most people in the know assumed Oracle was
male, except for the few that insisted it was an A.I.

A white, semi-transparent textfield opened
up underneath the head, with a flashing cursor.

>> Um, yeah, Selina typed.
>> How did you get in here?

:: There are a lot of things I can do,
and a lot of things I can’t,:: Oracle answered. :: I need you
for one of the things I can’t.::

>> If you need me for anything, then you
need to give better answers than that. HOW did you get in here?

:: Igor Fabricant. He has your
email, so… get into his computer, get into yours. ::

>> Thanks for finding the hole, I’ll
close it soon. Now, what can I do for you?

:: I need your help acquiring some
information from a secure facility. Hard copy reports, probably a CD
or two.

“Of course, what else would Oracle be
after,” Selina asked the cat on her shoulder. “A Monet?”

But she typed a different question:

>> What are these disks and who has
them?

:: The who is easy: FBI. You’re
not squeamish about breaking into federal agencies, right?::

>> Just mice, dear. Mice in bad
haircuts. And the disks?

:: That’s what I’m hoping to find out.
::

>> Before we go any further, you know I
don’t work for free, right?

:: I am WELL aware of that. I get
funding for the things I need through a... a private donor, if you
know what I mean. ::

“I see,” Bruce glowered. “So
you hired her. With my money. I paid for Catwoman to break into
FBI headquarters.”

“Well, she gave me a big discount since I
could supply her with all the blueprints on the physical layout.
Electrical, gas, water and HVAC, plus some internal activity memos so she’d
know what floors had an international scope—those are still occupied after
normal business hours, as a rule, because of all the overseas offices they
work with—when the third shift security clocked in, who had the custodial
contract, that kind of thing. Left the whole bundle, along with a
special com unit, for her to pick up at the main post office. She was
thrilled. Said I was the best commission she’d ever had. Took
thirty percent off the top for saving her so much trouble.”

Bruce closed his eyes and pinched the
bridge of his nose as if staving off a headache.

“Go on,” he said finally.

“Well, like I said, she gave me this
discount, but it was more than that. She… she really seemed to get on
board with the whole thing. Like she wasn’t just some hired help I
brought in for the break-in alone. My problem became her problem…”

“These offices are nice” Catwoman purred
into the com on reaching the 9th floor. “All the other
levels, they’re like a movie set of cold, impersonal cube farms. But
this…”

:: Describe it,:: the cool, Oracle
voice said calmly… at least, what had always been a cool Oracle voice.
This time Catwoman heard something else, something tense and coiled
underneath the calm veneer.

“The floor directory says Cyber-terrorism,
Identity Theft, and—”

:: I know that,:: Oracle spat
fiercely. Then she composed herself. :: Catwoman, listen,
what you’re looking at right now is like—like Scarecrow toxin, okay?
It’s my worst case scenario. If this doesn’t work, I wind up there.
They shut me down and I wind up in that office. They call it
‘recruiting specialized skill sets,’ but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you,
a job offered with the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over your head
isn’t a job, it’s indentured servitude. So I need you, I need you to
tell me exactly what you see. Be as brutal as possible. I
want a clear picture in my mind of what I’m fighting to stay out of.::

“…”

:: Catwoman? ::

“…”

:: Catwoman? ::

“I’m here… um… okay, I would say the feds
treat their tamed hackers like any keeper would treat an exotic creature
they’d captured and domesticated. They’ve made a cage to resemble the
creature’s natural habitat. Instead of white and gray, the cubicles
are orange and yellow and green and purple. Instead of the straight
rows on other floors, they’re arranged in an oval around a bin of Twinkies.”

:: Twinkies? :: Oracle said weakly.

“You wanted it brutal. There’s also
an old-fashioned popcorn machine and a big plush Dilbert.”

:: Oh god. ::

“Oracle, listen to me, you did the right
thing. You came to me, and we are not going to let you wind up here,
you hear me?”

:: Right. Sorry. I’m sorry,
Catwoman, I just… had to look into the mouth of the beast. Let’s get
back to work. ::

“Already there. There are only two
offices with actual honest-to-god walls, that’s got to be the supervisors.
Two offices, fifty-fifty chance getting it on the first try, and here you
are, three reports down in his outbox. Operation: Sibyl Snare.”

“She scanned the report and transmitted it
to me. It was bad. The hacker they had was Parallel Mayhem,
hacked the NASA mainframe, Sun Systems, LexCorp, Citibank. Real name:
Isaac Cummings. They had him developing a worm that could infect every
computer in the city within a few days, and when I connected to any infected
machine, it would do a lot more than give them my location. It would
create a subvirt, a virtual machine running underneath my system. Once
they had that in place, finding my physical whereabouts was nothing.
They could see everything I saw, even feed me bogus information as if it was
coming right off my own software.

“I knew I had to get my hands on the code
to create the proper countermeasures. Catwoman would have to go back
in, bring me the disk, wait around for me to create the countermeasures, and
then return the disk.”

“Unacceptable,” Bruce said, shaking his
head as if he was discussing a current mission. “The whole notion of
the worm could be a ploy to get you to bring a physical disk into the heart
of your operation and trace you that way.”

“That’s exactly what Catwoman said.”

:: Oracle, look, I don’t want to tell
you your business, so let me tell you about mine. You tell me to pick
up a package full of blueprints at the post office, I don’t bring that home.
I get a room at the Hyatt and look it over there. I haven’t been home
since I picked up this com and the rest of the stuff you sent, and I don’t
plan on going home until it’s at the bottom of the Hudson River. You
sensing a theme here? ::

“That you’re as cautious-slash-paranoid as
Batman? Yes, Catwoman, I get that, but I don’t have that luxury.
I need serious computer horsepower to break down and counter program that
worm. Normally, I could tap into my systems from anywhere: a laptop in
a coffee shop, hotel business center, even an internet café. But the
nature of this thing, I wouldn’t dare insert that disk into anything
but an isolated machine.”

:: Okay fine, tell me what you need,
I’ll get the equipment and set it up. ::

“You’ll ‘get’ a WayneTech supercomputer,”
she said sarcastically. “You’ll just up and ‘get’ an X1E with a T-5
core and CX-1 clusters?”

:: Oracle, I don’t think you get what
this whole ‘hiring Catwoman’ thing entails. You’ve got the best here.
Your needs just expanded to include—what was it—A WayneTech X1E with a T-5
core and CX clusters? So now it’s part of the job. That’s what
you’re paying me for, get it? ::

“So instead of going back in, getting the
disks and bringing them to me here for a few hours, then taking them back,
you’re going set up an alternate location with all the equipment I need, and
bring the disks there.”

:: Right.::

“…”

:: Oracle?::

“If that’s the case, I have one additional
stipulation,” she said finally.

:: Yes, your thirty percent discount
still app— ::

“Wheelchair accessible. Your
alternate location, it has to be fully accessible.”

:: Oh. I see. No problem.::

“At that point, it seemed petty to show up
wearing a mask,” Barbara concluded. “I hadn’t decided how I was going
to handle her coming to the Clocktower. I could have kept her
isolated, ‘pass the disk through a slot’ kind of thing, wait in the
elevator, keep her busy with layers of redundant security if she tried to
satisfy her curiosity. Even that seemed petty, considering what she
was doing to save my neck.”

“For money,” Bruce pointed out.

“I know, but still. Anyway, once she
went that far, offering to set up this whole alternate location fully
equipped with everything I needed, I just couldn’t bring myself to hide
under a wig and a mask—that she might well see through anyway. Not
like the shooting didn’t get enough press at the time. So I went as I
am, no disguises, and she recognized me. She was even polite enough to
say it was from some pictures taken with my father at the Police Benevolent
Association events, instead of, you know… Anyway, that was it.
It took almost four hours to break the encryptions, write a ‘vaccine’ to
counteract the worm, and insert a back door.”

Psychobat seethed. The sheer tonnage
of what he hadn’t known, what he had no glimmer of: one of his own
operatives targeted, taking it upon herself to deal with the situation
behind his back and without his knowledge—by employing one of his ENEMIES,
no less. Recent developments aside, Catwoman was a criminal, a thief,
and that Barbara would turn to her instead of… and then deciding to reveal
her identity. It was absolutely…

“I want to see every scrap of information
you have on this Isaac Cummings,” he graveled.

*** YEARS AFTER THAT ***

“Out of curiosity, what did you mean about
there being a masters in the disk I brought?” Tim asked, finishing a second
slice of pizza.

Barbara pulled the miniature thumb drive
from her USB port, looked over her desk until she found a similar piece of
plastic, and laid the two side-by-side in her outstretched palm.

“That’s a Sony microdrive,” she said,
pointing to the green drive with the word “Sony” embossed in the plastic in
place of the silver bat emblem. “They’ve been out for a couple years
now. Selina used one on a case a few months back. All of a
sudden, viola, WayneTech comes out with its own, just a few
millimeters thinner than the Sony, and two gig bigger. Master’s
dissertation at the very least. Possibly a doctorate.”

Bruce stopped at the Gordon-Grayson home
after his board meeting. He delivered a Harrod’s tote for Barbara and
a tie he’d bought Dick on Savile Row, then he rummaged in his pocket and
pulled out a microdrive identical to the one Tim had brought, except it was
blue instead of black, and bore the WayneTech logo instead of the bat
emblem.

“This is new,” Barbara said, pretending she
hadn’t seen one before. “Thinner than Sony’s.”

“And two gig larger,” Bruce graveled.
“It’s the encryption keys for the new partition I set up on the
Batcomputer.”

“Very good,” he said, making himself
comfortable on the sofa. “I must admit, when LexCorp tanked, I only
bought those tech divisions to save jobs in… Metropolis. I never…
expected them to produce… We have a problem here,” he said abruptly,
shifting on the sofa and bending so he could look underneath.

Hhhhhhhheeeeeehhhhhhhhhh

A wave of hot, hostile breath hit his face,
and the hissing little cat who had been fiercely pawing at his shoe now took
a brave swipe at his nose.

“We’re not exactly strangers,” he noted.
“First time we met, that thing was in a green box covered with question
marks, remember?”

“Hm, I guess there could be some bad
associations for him,” Barbara murmured, stroking Bytes’s fur as if he was
the injured party.

Bruce grunted.

ºº I am the stalking jungle cat of
death,ºº Whiskers declared, eyeing his prey between the leaves of the
lush jungle flora. The planter gave him the perfect cover. It
was a short run from the balcony to that luscious-looking prize: the
perfect size to tackle with his front paws, to clamp on tight while it
struggled, and then to sink his teeth into its meaty flesh.

Selina sat sideways on the sofa, which
faced the balcony so the sitter could enjoy the wonderful view of the city
through the sliding glass doors. Her legs were crossed at the ankles
and danged slightly over the edge of the sofa, bobbing ever so gently in
time to the Miles Davis playing in the background. It was her top
ankle that the jungle cat of death stalked so silently. He crouched,
jostled his weight between his back feet as a prelude to pouncing, and
then—his ear flicked. INTRUDER! The attack was called off as
Whiskers crouched deeper into the shadows. Heavy boots landed on the
balcony, and a dark cape brushed over the leaves of the lush jungle flora…

Two-Foot in Boots. It was the new
two-foot who came in from the sky, the same way Selina-Cat did when she
didn’t use the door.

“Well you caught me,” Selina said, drawing
a finger playfully along the top of Batman’s utility belt. “Now the
real question is: what are you going to do with me?”

Whiskers walked back around the back side
of the planter and peered through the leaves. Selina-Cat was no longer
sitting at the sofa, but if she was, he would no longer be able to see her
tasty ankle bobbing up and down. Whiskers stretched up and thrust his
nose into the leaves, trying to get them back into position.

“What I’m going to do is get some answers
about a hacker named Isaac Cummings.”

Whiskers trotted past the pair of them and
went into the bedroom. Even though he’d just passed Selina-Cat in the
living room, he looked around to make sure the coast was clear before
jumping up to the bed. From there, he walked across the nightstand to
the vanity, and from there, leapt to the top of the cat curio. It was
narrow, but he could just fit. Walking across it, he stepped down onto
the top of an étagère where Nutmeg liked to nap during the day.
Finding her asleep, he licked her nose to wake her.

ºº He’s back. Two-Foot in Boots.ºº

“Isaac Cummings,” Selina’s voice said in
the distance. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

Nutmeg stretched out her paws first, then
pushed the stretch up into her shoulders, and finally slid it out to her
rump. At the end of this process, she was standing, but still not
entirely awake. She shook out her back legs, one at a time, after
which, she felt awake enough to deal with Whiskers’s complaints.

“Mayhem,” Batman corrected. “Parallel
Mayhem. His real name is Isaac Cummings. He’s in Blackgate.
He was working for the FBI, and a few months after a certain cat crossed his
path, he’s left under a cloud, the original arrest resurfaces with new
counts tacked on...”

“Parallel Mayhem, that’s right; that was
the handle. I remember now. There was an aftermath there.”

“Well?” Batman glowered.

“Well?” Selina grinned.

Waves of silent, foreboding intensity in
answer to that—foreboding intensity that terrified the most hardened
criminals into speaking. From Catwoman, however, it had never produced
more than a purr, or occasionally a laugh.

“Since when do I tell you bedtime stories
about episodes like that?” she laughed.

“It’s been known to happen,” Batman said
flatly.

“Not without encouragement.”

ºº What should we do? He’s biting
Selina-Cat! ºº

ºº Don’t be such a fraidy cat, she can
bite him right back, see? ºº

“Oracle made it sound like you were both
sympathetic to Cummings. A crook with specialized skills forced to
work for the feds. ‘There but for the grace of getting caught…’
So what changed? Why did you turn on him?”

“My special gift,” Selina said. “If
there’s a target that’s something more than it seems, if there are wheels
within wheels, I will somehow stumble onto that particular artifact, condo,
gallery, whatever. With Cummings, it was all just a little too
uncomplicated. I mean, a worm specially designed to catch Oracle, kept
isolated on physical media so she HAS to get the physical disk to work on
it. I found it easily enough. I got it to her easily enough.
It all went off a little too smoothly; I kept waiting for the other shoe to
drop. It just had to be a trap, either for her or for me or…
something. It had to be more than it seemed. For two days after
I couldn’t sleep. Finally, yawning through a fitting at Kittlemeier’s,
it came to me. He had a bunch of gold question marks on his workbench,
and that switched on the light bulb. Riddle me this: What is a
computer worm?”

ºº What was that noise he made?
Did he woof like a dog? ºº

ºº More like a grunt. Two-foots do
that sometimes.ºº

Selina’s voice caressed each word that
followed like a connoisseur speaking of a great vintage.

“A worm infiltrates a system—or gets itself
brought into a system—and does its work from the inside. That’s
exactly what Cummings was doing. He was the real worm. He let
himself be caught, knowing the feds don’t send people like him to prison,
they put them to work. As soon as I had that idea, the hacks he had
done didn’t seem so random. They were a job application. Once
he’s on the inside, look what they’ve got him doing: writing a superworm to
infiltrate every computer in Gotham. He’s doing it right under their
noses, not just with their blessing but with their help! With their
protection, for Bast’s sake. It’s the best cover you could hope for,
to take the risks he’d have to take, make the mistakes that are bound to
happen along the way, and never risk capture.”

“Once the worm was deployed, it wouldn’t be
as benign to non-Oracle systems as the FBI thought,” Batman guessed.

Selina nodded.

“That was my theory. I’m no code head
like Oracle, but from what I’ve seen, a good hacker is just like a good
thief, and that’s a mindset I understand. If you can’t find an
exploit, you make one. What I was looking at with Cummings was the
equivalent of the British government bringing me in to help revamp security
in some back room of the Tower of London—and walking me right past the crown
jewels twice a day in the process. That doesn’t just happen on
its own.”

“What did you do about it?”

“What makes you think I felt the need to do
anything about it? I’m not a crimefighter, it has nothing to do with
me.”

“If every bank account in Gotham was zeroed
out overnight, it would certainly… Selina, Cummings wound up in Blackgate
within months of Oracle’s bringing him to your attention. You seem to
be the only one who was on to him. How did it come about?”